Pontormo
The nervous painter of Mannerism.
Pontormo was an anxious recluse in Florence. His Deposition has no cross, and the figures float in shrill colours.
Pontormo’s real name was Jacopo Carucci, and he was born in 1494 in Pontorme near Empoli, after which he was named. He was orphaned early and came to Florence as a youth. According to Vasari he worked briefly with several masters, among them Leonardo da Vinci and Piero di Cosimo, before becoming a pupil of Andrea del Sarto. The information about his early teachers is, however, uncertain.
He attracted attention early. Around 1520 he painted a large lunette with an idyllic rustic scene in the Medici villa at Poggio a Caiano. In the 1520s he fled the plague to the Carthusian monastery of Galluzzo outside Florence and painted frescoes of the Passion of Christ there. They show how he was influenced by Albrecht Dürer’s prints, which drew criticism from Vasari.
His principal work is the Deposition in the Capponi Chapel in the church of Santa Felicita in Florence, painted around 1525–28 and still in place. There is no cross, no tomb and almost no landscape. The figures seem to float in a whirl, and the colours are pale pink, blue and acid green. The faces have large, anxious eyes. The picture is one of the most important works of early Mannerism, in which the calm order of the Renaissance gives way to tension and emotion.
Pontormo is described as anxious, withdrawn and difficult to work with. According to Vasari he had a room built in his house that he entered by a ladder, which he pulled up after him. His diary from his last years survives and is mostly about what he ate and how he felt. His last great work, frescoes in the choir of San Lorenzo, was destroyed in the 18th century. He died in Florence around the turn of the year 1556–57.
His pupil Agnolo Bronzino carried the style forward. Pontormo was long seen as an oddity, but in the 20th century he attracted new attention, and today he is admired for his personal and expressive painting.